Poverty

Last week’s repo meltdown points to 2008 financial crisis & may lead to new bank crashes – Keiser Report
Forecasting the imminent demise of European banks, an expert talks RT’s Keiser Report through last week’s repo market meltdown and what it may indicate. “The treasuries that settled last week didn’t go well on the funding market – the Fed had to step in and do a $75 billion repo facility on an overnight basis for these treasury securities,” [...]
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Trump changes on poverty in US are like re-defining ‘drowning person as NOT drowning’ – Lee Camp
The Trump administration wants to redefine the poverty level, which would kick hundreds of thousands with marginal incomes off welfare, while simultaneously reducing poverty rates in America. [...]
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Seattle Is Dying: Drugs And Homelessness In Seattle
KOMO's Eric Johnson explores the impact the drug and homelessness problem is having on the city and possible solutions in this documentary titled, "Seattle is Dying." "Let me ask you something. What if Seattle is dying and we don't even know it?" Johnson asks in the introduction. "This story is about a wave of seething anger that is now boiling over into outrage. [...]
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Inequality at record levels as new billionaire emerges every 2 days – Oxfam
The gap between the super-rich and the rest of the world has never been wider, with 26 people now owning the same amount of wealth as 3.8 billion of the less privileged, global charity Oxfam said in a new report. [...]
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Economic boom for whom? Keiser Report examines America’s disappearing middle class (VIDEO)
The US economy is booming – but fewer and fewer are reaping the benefits. The Keiser Report crunched the numbers behind America’s dwindling middle class, and warned that the country’s young are in for a rough, debt-ridden future. [...]
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Chances of US Recession Increase Amid Mounting Risks – Reports
Economic experts from major international financials, academic circles, and government agencies say the US is facing mounting risks of a recession due to elevated uncertainty in international trade, a possible slowdown in domestic investment, and rising costs of doing business. [...]
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America… Its Own Worst Enemy
It is an epic paradox that President Donald Trump, like previous US presidents, boasts of America’s military supremacy and its vital role as defender of the nation. The Trump administration in its first year in office boosted the annual military budget to $700 billion, up from an already gargantuan average figure of some $600 billion a year. [...]
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Richest 1% will own two-thirds of global wealth by 2030
A report by the UK House of Commons library has warned that the continued accumulation of wealth at the top will fuel growing distrust and anger over the coming decade unless action is taken to restore balance. According to the report, seen by The Guardian, if trends seen since the 2008 financial crash were to continue, then the top 1 percent will hold 64 percent of the world’s wealth by 2030. [...]
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‘Humanitarian Crisis in Hollywood’: Chronic homelessness vs. the American Dream
Thousands of people in one of America’s richest cities live on sidewalks infested with flesh-eating bacteria and tuberculosis. A Redfish Media report looks at the chronic homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Homelessness in Los Angeles has increased 43 percent in just four years. [...]
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Bread and Circuses: WSJ Tries to Bury Its Own Deep Dive Into US Inequality
The Wall Street Journal is accused by its employees of attempting to suppress its own story after a senior editor allegedly tried to bury a deep dive into the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published on Tuesday a graphics-heavy in-depth study on the aftermath of the world-shaking 2008 financial crisis, particularly noting that banking and investmen [...]
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NIMBY in America: The US Struggles with its Large Homeless Population
A bitterly-fought political campaign to address the rapidly-growing homeless population in a wealthy southern California county points to the yawning inequality gap in the US. A wide-ranging plan in southern California's Orange County that was intended to relocate hundreds of homeless — including children, women and the elderly who had been forcefully kicked out of long-term camps by placing the [...]
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Nearly half of Americans will retire broke
Some 42 percent of elderly US citizens have less than $10,000 put aside for their golden years, according to the report by a personal finance resource GoBankingRates, which polled over 1,000 adults last month. The survey, carried out for the third consecutive year, suggests that a lack of planning and savings, along with a longer life expectancy, may shatter people’s retirement dreams. [...]
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Inequality American Style: Airline Workers Sell Blood, Need Food Stamps to Eat
Those colorfully-dressed workers making sure your US short-haul domestic flight is properly packed, safely inspected and flight-ready are not paid enough, frequently requiring social services to live. Although employer American Airlines posted a shareholder-pleasing $1.9 billion profit in 2017, many of its workers are scrambling at the poverty line, selling their blood and receiving food stamps [...]
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US Collapse – the Spectacle of Our Time
May you live in interesting times, goes the Chinese proverb. Few can doubt that we are indeed living in such an interesting time. Big changes are afoot in the world, it seems. None more so than the collapsing of the American Empire. The US is going through an historic "correction" in the same way that the Soviet Union did some 30 years ago when the latter was confronted with the reality [...]
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Russophobia a futile bid to conceal US, European decline
It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War as part of the Soviet Union. But the truth is Western states are challenged by internal problems. Ironically, by denying their own internal democratic challenges, Western authorities are only hastening their institutional demis [...]
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US 2019 Budget Favors Foreign Conflicts Over Poor Americans
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump released his “efficient, effective and accountable” budget for fiscal year 2019 and, to no surprise, social programs are on the chopping block. Aside from wanting to privatize the International Space Station and eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, Trump is also looking to cut food assistance programs by $214 billion. [...]
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American decline: Open pools of raw sewage in the richest country in the world
As the wealthy continue sucking the country dry, the question isn’t if the US will cease to provide a decent standard of living for its people. Rather it is how many people will be sacrificed on the way down. In America, the richest nation in the world when measured by raw GDP, children are getting sick from living by open pools of raw sewage.. [...]
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World’s richest 1% bagged 82% of global wealth in 2017, while poorest half got nothing – Oxfam
World’s richest 1% bagged 82% of global wealth in 2017, while poorest half got nothing – Oxfam The inequality crisis is worsening, according to a new study by global charity Oxfam, which found that the world’s richest 42 people own the same amount of wealth as the poorest 50 percent worldwide. [...]
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Liberty lost? Americans increasingly unhappy with levels of freedom, survey says
America is often referred to as the "Land of the Free," but as citizens prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July, their satisfaction with the country's freedom is significantly lower than it was a decade ago, according to a newly released Gallup poll. The survey found that although 91 percent of Americans were satisfied with the freedom in their lives in 2006, only 75 percent feel the same way t [...]
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Can the average American live off Social Security?
The answer is crystal clear. For years, Social Security has served as a key source of income for millions of retired Americans. In fact, these days, an estimated 61% of retirees rely on their benefits to provide at least half of their income. The problem, however, is that Social Security was never designed to cover seniors' living costs in their entirety. So when we ask whether the average America [...]
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Chinese Factory Workers for Ivanka Trump’s Brand Make About $1 Per Hour
Here’s hoping there's rent control in China: Employees at a factory that manufactures apparel for Ivanka Trump’s clothing business earn just $62 each week, for 60 hours of work, it has been revealed. There are 80 workers at the plant, which produces clothing for Ivanka Trump’s eponymous brand as well as for Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, The Washington Post reported. [...]
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GOP’s Planned Cuts to Medicaid Will Impoverish and Imperil Millions of Aging Baby Boomers and Seniors
One-fifth of Medicare recipients are covered through Medicaid, including nursing homes and long-term care. The House Republican leadership’s Obamacare repeal bill will not only cause upwards of 24 million people to lose their health care coverage over the next decade, as the Congressional Budget Office has said, but it will also push millions of seniors already on the financial edge into deep an [...]
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